While some online services are stepping up their efforts to protect private user data from government requests, there is plenty room for improvement, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) said on Thursday. It is time for all companies that hold private user data to make public commitments to defend their users against government overreach, the foundation said.

European authorities have taken Germany to court for failing to implement the E.U. Data Retention Directive.

Rogue copies of Green Simurgh, an Internet proxy software application used in Iran and Syria, have been found to contain malware that records users' activities and keystrokes.

Corporations are starting to embrace technologies used to monitor employee Internet use, with 60 percent expected to watch workers' social media use for security breaches by 2015, according to a new report from Gartner.

Two U.S. lawmakers have called on the U.S. Department of Justice to reopen its investigation into Google's snooping on Wi-Fi networks in 2010 after recent questions about the company's level of cooperation with federal inquiries.

Two U.S. lawmakers have called on the U.S. Department of Justice to reopen its investigation into Google's snooping on Wi-Fi networks in 2010 after recent questions about the company's level of cooperation with federal inquiries.

A pair of security researchers have proposed an extension to the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol that would allow browsers to detect and block fraudulently-issued SSL certificates.

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While apologies from BP to the world regarding its environmental disaster and even from a U.S. Congressman to BP have stolen headlines of late, the tech industry has not been without its fair share of apologies during the first half of 2010 either.

The continuing saga of Google's wireless snooping and the maelstrom it's generated won't end anytime soon.

Facebook deserves plenty of blame for messing too much with its privacy settings, but no amount of fixing will stop people from embarrassing themselves on the Internet.

Want an expert lesson in how to respond without actually responding and how to apologize without saying you're sorry? Then you need to read Facebook CEO Mark Zukerberg's quasi-mea culpa in today's Washington Post. Do it now; I'll wait.

New Yorker Barry Hoggard draws a line in the sand when it comes to online privacy. In May he said farewell to 1251 Facebook friends by deleting his account of four years to protest what he calls the social network's eroding privacy policies.

Facebook's privacy problems reportedly have the social network rethinking its approach, and a new poll suggests that the threat of user decline is real, but don't expect a mass exodus any time soon.

Google is cleaning up its mess after the company says it mistakenly collecting browsing data from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks as part of its Street View project.

Facebook wants to know "What's on your mind?" Twitter asks "What's happening?" But that's getting old already. The burning question for the next wave of social networking is "Where are you?"--and services like Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite, and Loopt want you to use your smartphone to answer it.